Hardware Implementation and Comparison of CRA and TRA when Trying to Recover the AES-128 Key

In this scientific paper, a comparison of two side-channel radio attacks is made: CRA - Correlation Radio Attack and TRA - Template Radio Attack. Both attacks are tested on mixed-signal chips that include both the radio transceiver and the digital logic on the same integrated circuit. In systems like this, the analog transmitter unintentionally leaks sensitive data, related to the cryptographic hardware components and the software being run on the CPU, by broadcasting it on a shifted frequency. The basic conception is that information from the electromagnetic leakage is gathered and then exploited by analyzing it via the side-channel attacks in order to crack the AES-128 algorithm. The system needed for the experiment consists of: a PCA10040 chip by Nordic Semiconductor, an USRP n210 by CP-Ettus Research and a Linux-based computer.